Centaur Guitar at the NAMM Show Vol. III

This post was written by Little Big J on February 13, 2010
Posted Under: NAMM 2010

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what if I’m three weeks late. Let’s see you do better. No. Really. I’m sick and tired of… OK, never mind. I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s been rough around here lately. Kelly’s been grumpier than usual and the Snitch hurt his back and is all hopped up on the pills and such. I’m really the only guy keeping it together around here these days.

Anyway I guess what I’m really trying to say is I’m sorry. Let’s just get down to it shall we?

Will the real Hugh McDonald please stand up?

Well Saturday started alright. You know how it goes. Birds chirping, palm trees swaying and I missed the damn continental breakfast again. I promised myself I was gonna get the muffin this time but I just woke up too late. Nice work. OK, I know that’s not the part you care about but this is my blog, not yours. OK, this next part is the part you care about.

Imagine if you will… You wake up tired and hung over on Saturday morning. You find yourself in the basement of a huge convention center under the cool glow of a thousand fluorescent lights as dozens of guitar dorks noodle in the background – it’s strangely relaxing. You’re just about to enjoy your first drink of coffee and you tell yourself once again, “it’s gonna be ok J.” OK… Got it? Are you with me so far? Alright, now imagine that the noise stops, the lights flicker and all of a sudden a dude dressed like Paul McCartney walks up to you and asks if you’d like to meet Hugh McDonald.

Wild, huh? Wait, what? What do you mean who’s Hugh McDonald? It’s Hugh “Huge” McDonald, man. The bass player for Bon Jovi! He played for years with the David Bromberg Band! And you know what? Dude, he’s a totally nice guy. I’m pretty sure he was hung over and confused too. We bonded over the many varied experiences that we had in common as well as our mutual respect for each others work.

And things really just got better as the morning wore on. I left my meeting with Hugh, took two left turns and bumped square into George Friggin Barris!! The world renowned King of Kustomizers! He was standing there next to the real friggin’ Batmobile pimping Hallmark’s killer new Wing Bat guitar!


George Friggin’ Barris! (Unfortunate victim of the Malachi Cunch)	Seymour Duncan!! (Inventor of the P-Rail!)	Neil Schon (Don’t Stop Believin’)

As I’ve mentioned before, you can’t take two steps in this place without running into a major industry big wig. Despite our best efforts to prove this theorem wrong, two steps due south of George Barris we ran smack into Seymour Duncan. Now here’s the deal, industry wigs don’t get much bigger than Seymour Duncan’s. The man’s a damn legend! He’s wound pickups for Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page for cryin’ out loud!

He also hangs with Neil Schon, man! That guys no slouch either! Neil and I had a lot of catching up to do but I’d made an appointment for a photo op with Bootsy Collins so I had to go.

Bootsy and I go way back and he wanted to do some promo shots with me. Now who am I to say no to Bootsy? It took us quite some time to stage this elaborate shot but thankfully we were able to pull it off! I’d look for it soon in all the bass mags.

After hobknobbing with all the big shots on Saturday morning we decided to get out of the NAMM show and get into some real trouble at the Deke Dickerson Guitar Geek Festival! Man, what a treat! Now if you’re a guitar geek (and don’t fool yourself, if you’re reading this you are a guitar geek… or you’re my mom… thanks Mom) you must attend this festival. I’ve never seen so many original Bigsby’s in one place at one time! Well before this I’d really ever only seen two up close so that’s easy, but really, there were dozens of ‘em!

It smells funky in here!!

And man, oh man, Big Sandy was there. Deke was there… The dude with the afro and the moustache from the guitar magazines was there! Don’t worry store attorney. I didn’t even bring up any of our previous issues…


Big Sandy is cooler than J Damn	Deke Dickerson Guitar Super Hero	J gets moustache advice

Well, that pretty much ended our excursion. We logged many miles and witnessed many tragedies but we made it home safe. We also scored a few goodies like the new line of Way Huge pedals reissued by Jim Dunlop and the very handy Pedal Train line of pedal boards! Come by and check them out!

I hope that you all understand the hell that I’ve been through just to give you a little insight into the mad, mad world that is the retail music industry. You’re welcome.